Calculating payroll is a monthly, bi-semimonthly, biweekly or even sometimes a weekly process depending on your company’s pay periods. If your time clock calculator is outdated, this process can easily take way more time than necessary. The American Payroll Association estimated that it takes six minutes to calculate a paper time card by hand. According to ExakTime’s Payroll Savings Calculator, if you’re processing payroll for 50 employees, this extra time could cost you $3,900 per pay period in wasted time, not to mention the cost of human error and overpayment. It’s time to retire your outdated time clock calculator and make the move to an automated system.
An automated time tracking system, like the ExakTime time clock app and rugged time clocks, allow companies to plug in their own business’s data, such as number of employees, average hourly wage, the wage of your payroll processor and the average hours in a workweek for your employees. The result is savings in three big areas: wasted time, human error and overpayment.
Manually Processing Paper Time Cards Wastes Time
As mentioned above, ExakTime’s Payroll Savings Calculator estimates it takes six minutes to manually process a paper time card. That six minutes could take longer if you need to decipher data due to sloppy handwriting. According to research by EY, just under 30% of HR processes, like entering time cards, could be automated, freeing up valuable time for other, more strategic, work.
Automated time tracking solutions, like ExakTime, make calculating payroll more efficient and accurate. Records collected by either the mobile app or ExakTime’s rugged time clock are automatically pushed to software in your office, eliminating the need for time-consuming trips to multiple job sites to collect time records. Your payroll processor can simply sync the numbers and in seconds you can create payroll reports. And, with AccountLinx, the data can be synced directly with your payroll program. If any employee’s time punches are missing, that can be seen during the week—so there won’t be a last-minute scramble to ensure delinquent time sheets are in by the payroll deadline.
Manual Processes Leave You Open to Human Error
When calculating payroll manually, there’s always a risk of human error. Transposed numbers, misread times and calculation errors happen. According to ExakTime’s Payroll Savings Calculator, there is an error rate of up to 8% of payroll for a given pay period. It doesn’t take even dozens of employees for that error rate to quickly add up to a significant financial drain on a business. Even with the best training and due diligence, human error cannot be completely eliminated.
Digital clock-ins that must occur on a job site (or that use a mobile phone’s GPS capabilities) and an automated payroll system that integrates with your accounting program is the easiest way to nearly eliminate the costs associated with human error. Good news: the calculator mentioned in the title and above shows you just how much you can start saving with a 100% accurate digital time tracking system.
Manual Processes Can Lead to Overpayment
A huge financial drain on a company’s payroll process is overpayment, e.g., paying your employees more than what they worked. Time rounding and time theft are typically the reason for overpayment. Unfortunately, not every employee you hire will be 100% honest or have your best interests at heart. Two-thirds of all US businesses fall victim to employee theft and an extra 15 minutes here and there can really add up. “Buddy Punching,” where an employee has another employee clock them in or out when they’re not at work, can lead to hours of false work records every month, costing you in payroll. Hour inflation is a problem faced by employers with a remote workforce of 20 workers or 200—and those minutes and hours add up to a significant and unnecessary monetary loss.
The workforce management options offered by ExakTime have systems in place to eliminate overpayment. ExakTime Mobile’s time clock app utilizes FaceFront Biometrics to make sure employees can’t punch in and out for other workers. GPS time tracking allows you to see where employees are located for every punch, ensuring employees are where they are when they say they are. Couple GPS with geofencing, where a digital fence is added to a worksite, and companies can further eliminate time theft. Geofencing products like ExakTime work by requiring a worker to clock in and out with their own digital pin inside the geofence.
Just as geofencing can put an end to practices employers dislike such as buddy punching, the technology can also work in the employee’s favor. On a busy worksite, confusion or disputes about hours worked can delay a paycheck. By using a time tracking app with geofencing, uncertainty is eliminated. Workers and employers alike are held accountable. Disputes can be quickly resolved with data that is synced from the app to the back office.
With so many costs on the line, the time couldn’t be better to retire your old, time clock calculator. Automating your time tracking processes with tools like ExakTime’s time clock app and rugged time clocks, can save an average company thousands of dollars in wasted time, human error and overpayment.
